DAY 29 - a bit of laugh

I had the first chemo 6 days ago, I was given pills to suppress potential sickness, but I have some side effects such as ringing in my ears, shaky hands (a bit), but generally I would say I am rather tired, a similar feeling to being hung over :) I have slept a lot over the past few days. But finally today, I rounded up some energy and played some Metallica on my drums :) And two days ago, my salivary glands started to act up. I read on the Internet that it might be one of the possible side effects of the chemo. I get a prickly feeling in the glands, even when I spot a bar of chocolate. The glands start to pump and it hurts, not much though, but it does hurt. And one more thing, I drank coca cola yesterday which tasted a bit unsavory to me, but my friend argued that the coke was just a regular and fresh coca cola, so I guess, my taste buds are goin’ a bit crazy, too. But the most annoying is the fatigue, and I feel like my head was going around. So, I rest a lot. Hopefully, it will get better soon. I have my next chemo in one week, so we’ll see how it goes then.

But the greatest thing is that my cough backed off totally right after the first chemo! (I have the tumor - man, I hate that word - in my neck and between my lungs which was causing very annoying and choking cough.) And also a number of painful and swollen nodes on my neck disappeared. Great!

Plus, I am taking pills against gout.

But two hours before the chemo on Tuesday, I underwent a bone marrow puncture. I have to say, I’d been a little afraid, because I’d heard it hurt a lot. But the nurse injected some funny liquid into my veins and I felt only little pressure inside my pelvis. Right after the doctor pulled out the drill (I believe it is called a trephine), I (even surprisingly to me) burst into enormous laughter :) The nurse was like, what? :)) As I couldn’t stop laughing, they laughed, too :) I was glad it ended up that way. I remember saying jokingly that “hey doc, do the other pelvis, too, it was fun” :) omg ! Within the next hour, the “funny feeling” fizzled out and I was good to go for the first chemo.

This is how the puncture looks like:

So, they are now supposed to analyze the bone marrow and find out the spread of the lymphoma. This makes me a little worried, but hopefully the results will be okay. I really do hope that I won’t need to undergo bone marrow transplantation, but I think it is done in the most extreme cases. I don’t know exactly, yet.